Guild Wars 2

Even through the boring/broken meta and balance is the main reason I mention when explaining why I left the game, crashing every 15 minutes in WvW on Mac didn’t help keeping me interested in the game.

The problem right now is the imbalances on numbers, objects and map size.

WvW weekly points should be removed. It is not necessary.

Maecks.2918:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

It was good to remove crafting from wvw: We often faced the problem of being under heavy attack on our map but had a big queue due to so many players crafting and thus blocking slots for others that wanted to to defend the map

They could have increased the map capacity for all the borderland maps by the average number of people who craft/hour instead of removing the crafting tables. Or they could have put them in a separate instance, like the Obsidian Sanctum is in its own instance.

Edit: if there were that many people coming in to craft that shows how much of a hook that was to pull people out of PvE and into WvW. Any business will tell you that the hard part is getting people through the door. Crafting was the “door” through which PvE people entered WvW and then stayed to “buy” the product (play on the maps).

/shrug. I know ANet isn’t going to reverse this decision and as for me, my crafting char is now parked at a crafting table in Divinities Reach. But if ANet ever wants to look into why the population in WvW is dropping they should not only consider the reasons brought up by WvW players but also the reasons why PvE players don’t go to WvW.

SkylightMoon.2098:

Oh please. This has nothing to do with the holidays. Thats a hilarious joke. I came back to the game over a month ago and every week I’ve been surprised to see how T1 now feels like mid tier WvW 1 or 2 years ago.

WvW is hemorrhaging players. Its not a symptom of the game as a whole either. The PVE and PVP population are certainly not like they are at the launch of the game, but they are certainly stable. WvW is not.

Those of you who play in WvW and deny that Anet has neglected this gamemode as if its an unwanted child are only further harming it by not speaking up.

Seriously, no one who has consistently played WvW could actually say claim “No no, its just cuz muh holidays”. Its clearly more than that, so stop bsing about it.

Even if the population isn’t dropping (but it is!), what is hurting the game is the departure of the most hardcore and die hard players.

By hardcore and die hard I do not just mean a commander leading a zerg of 40+ around. I mean those commanders that knows the game inside and out. Those that tries to train up new commanders and teaches new players the tips and tricks.

People stay in a game when it is something they look forward to every night. But when younger players sees the older players complain about the game and leaving, what is there for the younger players to look forward to?

Brain drain hurts any company and organizations. And it certainly hurts a MMO.

SkylightMoon.2098:

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

In a competitive game, even in real world sport, the player count is important and that is why the number of players is fixed in a sports team and reducing the player count of one team is used as a penalty.

But WvWvW ist a 24/7 game mode where the player count is not fixed. It has only a maximum player cap per map (which is between 60 and 100 maybe). So “equal numbers of players” happens only at times, where a map has reached its maximum players/cap.

That is a problem that can not be fixed for WvWvW and as a result, WvWvW will never be a competetive game mode like a 5v5 or maybe a 10v10. And it will never be “fair”. It was never intended to be “fair”. Because it is not WvW but WvWvW.

I think A-net should not try to make the game mode or matches more “fair” but should find other ways to make it more fun for (most of the) players. That is also not easy because “fun” is different for different players.

Chaba.5410:

Mulling.8421:

It doesn’t take alot to fix WvW

The population imbalance problem apparently does take a lot. Not many RvR games have found a successful 24/7 “even numbers” formula.

Which RvR games have found a successful 24/7 “even numbers” formula?
I am wondering how they did it.

Zok.4956:

SkylightMoon.2098:

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

In a competitive game, even in real world sport, the player count is important and that is why the number of players is fixed in a sports team and reducing the player count of one team is used as a penalty.

But WvWvW ist a 24/7 game mode where the player count is not fixed. It has only a maximum player cap per map (which is between 60 and 100 maybe). So “equal numbers of players” happens only at times, where a map has reached its maximum players/cap.

That is a problem that can not be fixed for WvWvW and as a result, WvWvW will never be a competetive game mode like a 5v5 or maybe a 10v10. And it will never be “fair”. It was never intended to be “fair”. Because it is not WvW but WvWvW.

I think A-net should not try to make the game mode or matches more “fair” but should find other ways to make it more fun for (most of the) players. That is also not easy because “fun” is different for different players.

The reason why WvW is dying faster now is that it is no longer fun for the losing sides.

As a WvW veteran I can honestly say that EotM is more fun than WvW right now.

Swamurabi.7890:

Zok.4956:

SkylightMoon.2098:

The core problems have never been fixed. Score, population, and rewards. Its a mode that has been flawed from its inception because there has never been any incentive to win a match, because population dictates match. That also means you cant reward winners of the match.

If that could be fixed it would also be good.

In a competitive game, even in real world sport, the player count is important and that is why the number of players is fixed in a sports team and reducing the player count of one team is used as a penalty.

But WvWvW ist a 24/7 game mode where the player count is not fixed. It has only a maximum player cap per map (which is between 60 and 100 maybe). So “equal numbers of players” happens only at times, where a map has reached its maximum players/cap.

That is a problem that can not be fixed for WvWvW and as a result, WvWvW will never be a competetive game mode like a 5v5 or maybe a 10v10. And it will never be “fair”. It was never intended to be “fair”. Because it is not WvW but WvWvW.

I think A-net should not try to make the game mode or matches more “fair” but should find other ways to make it more fun for (most of the) players. That is also not easy because “fun” is different for different players.

The reason why WvW is dying faster now is that it is no longer fun for the losing sides.

As a WvW veteran I can honestly say that EotM is more fun than WvW right now.

It really is, and that itself is a kittening tragedy.

WvW is hurt, where are the doctors?

The only thing that the players want is comunication, just that.

KINGRPG.3492:

The problem right now is the imbalances on numbers, objects and map size.

WvW weekly points should be removed. It is not necessary.

I would argue that the lack of proper balance done on skills (which has ruined the team gameplay mechanics) is more problematic than the population balance. Fights are simply not fun anymore and even when maps are full on reset it doesn’t magically makes the gameplay better.

There is a lack of vision across the board. It’s really apparent when they think deployable canons is an improvement while there is no build variety at all and auto-attacks / passive skills dominate the gameplay.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Maecks.2918:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

It was good to remove crafting from wvw: We often faced the problem of being under heavy attack on our map but had a big queue due to so many players crafting and thus blocking slots for others that wanted to to defend the map

They could have increased the map capacity for all the borderland maps by the average number of people who craft/hour instead of removing the crafting tables. Or they could have put them in a separate instance, like the Obsidian Sanctum is in its own instance.

Edit: if there were that many people coming in to craft that shows how much of a hook that was to pull people out of PvE and into WvW. Any business will tell you that the hard part is getting people through the door. Crafting was the “door” through which PvE people entered WvW and then stayed to “buy” the product (play on the maps).

/shrug. I know ANet isn’t going to reverse this decision and as for me, my crafting char is now parked at a crafting table in Divinities Reach. But if ANet ever wants to look into why the population in WvW is dropping they should not only consider the reasons brought up by WvW players but also the reasons why PvE players don’t go to WvW.

Since you never ever spawn into WvW on log on, the crafting tables in WvW would always be an extra step compared to having a char parked near PvE crafters. Its just as simple to click a city on the map as it is the WvW home border. The idea that this was “doorway” into WvW is bizarre.

No, what has hurt WvW is among other things:
- Arrowcart damage buffed by ~80%
- The stability debacle
- HoT elite spec CC/passives and approach to I’m-full-dps-and-bunker traits
- DBL which reduced border activity by a third and remain crippling to this day
- The constant removal of player involvement in favor of automatic systems (scouts being pushed aside by sentries and watchtowers for example)
- The absolute destruction of small size guilds with the HoT guild system
- OP tactivators for those that can afford it
- Server links without fixing the identity issue
- Massive bonus PPT for high tier objectives which wrecked the scoring system that actually started to turn out decent, PPK tuned down to TL;DR level of importance
- And now we got 2-1-1 on top of this kittensauce

And probably 50 more things. Removing the crafting tables (and finally adding banks ffs) is one of the good things.

Dawdler.8521:

- Server links without fixing the identity issue

This is part of it for me.

In addition there is the fact that my server has been linked, twice in a row now, with a host that I am loathe to assist. I do not want my efforts to contribute to them so I am left out of WvW.

Anet, telling players that they are required to play with people that they dislike in order to participate in a game mode is not a good way to encourage them to play.

Dawdler.8521:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Maecks.2918:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

It was good to remove crafting from wvw: We often faced the problem of being under heavy attack on our map but had a big queue due to so many players crafting and thus blocking slots for others that wanted to to defend the map

They could have increased the map capacity for all the borderland maps by the average number of people who craft/hour instead of removing the crafting tables. Or they could have put them in a separate instance, like the Obsidian Sanctum is in its own instance.

Edit: if there were that many people coming in to craft that shows how much of a hook that was to pull people out of PvE and into WvW. Any business will tell you that the hard part is getting people through the door. Crafting was the “door” through which PvE people entered WvW and then stayed to “buy” the product (play on the maps).

/shrug. I know ANet isn’t going to reverse this decision and as for me, my crafting char is now parked at a crafting table in Divinities Reach. But if ANet ever wants to look into why the population in WvW is dropping they should not only consider the reasons brought up by WvW players but also the reasons why PvE players don’t go to WvW.

Since you never ever spawn into WvW on log on, the crafting tables in WvW would always be an extra step compared to having a char parked near PvE crafters. Its just as simple to click a city on the map as it is the WvW home border. The idea that this was “doorway” into WvW is bizarre.

No, what has hurt WvW is among other things:
- Arrowcart damage buffed by ~80%
- The stability debacle
- HoT elite spec CC/passives and approach to I’m-full-dps-and-bunker traits
- DBL which reduced border activity by a third and remain crippling to this day
- The constant removal of player involvement in favor of automatic systems (scouts being pushed aside by sentries and watchtowers for example)
- The absolute destruction of small size guilds with the HoT guild system
- OP tactivators for those that can afford it
- Server links without fixing the identity issue
- Massive bonus PPT for high tier objectives which wrecked the scoring system that actually started to turn out decent, PPK tuned down to TL;DR level of importance
- And now we got 2-1-1 on top of this kittensauce

And probably 50 more things. Removing the crafting tables (and finally adding banks ffs) is one of the good things.

And one of the complaints in this thread is the difficulty in getting new players into WvW. You’re focusing on queues and missing that the “hook” pulled players into WvW and the free, frequent advertising in PvE map chat was doing for WvW.

/shrug. If short or no queues is the most important thing, then you have it.

Have fun in WvW. ^^

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE Im still trying to meet one person who voted on this scoring system. I have yet to find that one person. WvW is going downhill and hopefully Anet will realize this and maybe fix the problem.

Xillllix.3485:

I would argue that the lack of proper balance done on skills (which has ruined the team gameplay mechanics) is more problematic than the population balance. Fights are simply not fun anymore and even when maps are full on reset it doesn’t magically makes the gameplay better.

There is a lack of vision across the board. It’s really apparent when they think deployable canons is an improvement while there is no build variety at all and auto-attacks / passive skills dominate the gameplay.

I totally agree that proper balance is the key here, and they’re doing badly lately. However keep in mind that they have a separate balance team and the WvW team has no authority to tweak that. I think they also stated so for PvP before, when they’re talking about why they chose to tweak the amulets instead of tweaking real balance. Therefore we can’t just say that they think deployable cannons are more important than build variety. I believe they also said that adding deployable cannons and repair hammers could be done very fast, so it’s not that bad to try them out while we wait for the other changes.

I don’t know why the balance team don’t really care about WvW, but since finally they started to split skills, I expect to see a split for WvW in the future as well so we could have better balance in the future. Only a wish though, of course…

[1/2]

Dawdler.8521:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Maecks.2918:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We need more new players who stay. We can welcome them, but they need a reason to come in (it used to be for map completion or because they saw a request for help on map chat in a server based town – both have gone). Make WvW fun for new players again.

Just a comment. WvW also used to have a steady stream of players coming in to do crafting. PvE players used to tell other PvE players to go to WvW for this reason. Once there players could see it’s a whole another set of maps, explore and try WvW out. No one in PvE recommends going to WvW anymore. I used to suggest going to WvW in map chat to new players all the time and give instructions on how to get there. I haven’t done it once since crafting was removed and I never see it in chat anymore from anyone else.

Removing crafting shut down a steady inflow of fresh, new players and it also removed a reason to even think about WvW unless you’re a PvP player. And before you say, but… queues!! Crafting was in the borderlands and how often does the borderlands have queues.

It was good to remove crafting from wvw: We often faced the problem of being under heavy attack on our map but had a big queue due to so many players crafting and thus blocking slots for others that wanted to to defend the map

They could have increased the map capacity for all the borderland maps by the average number of people who craft/hour instead of removing the crafting tables. Or they could have put them in a separate instance, like the Obsidian Sanctum is in its own instance.

Edit: if there were that many people coming in to craft that shows how much of a hook that was to pull people out of PvE and into WvW. Any business will tell you that the hard part is getting people through the door. Crafting was the “door” through which PvE people entered WvW and then stayed to “buy” the product (play on the maps).

/shrug. I know ANet isn’t going to reverse this decision and as for me, my crafting char is now parked at a crafting table in Divinities Reach. But if ANet ever wants to look into why the population in WvW is dropping they should not only consider the reasons brought up by WvW players but also the reasons why PvE players don’t go to WvW.

Since you never ever spawn into WvW on log on, the crafting tables in WvW would always be an extra step compared to having a char parked near PvE crafters. Its just as simple to click a city on the map as it is the WvW home border. The idea that this was “doorway” into WvW is bizarre.

I don’t know if you’re doing PvE or not, but I was someone who was converted into WvW, and was never for PvP at all. Crafting stations were the reason I started knowing and playing WvW back way before mega servers were ever introduced. I never knew I would love it and it took me sometime for me to get into it.

I could assure you that they’re super useful for PvE players given the fact that if you exit WvW you’re teleported back to where you were before. ANet just starts selling those royal passes again, and I am kinda interested because now we don’t have WvW crafting stations and I looked around, I saw people were also discussing if those passes would teleport them back to where they are. The answer is no. A lot of them lose interests then.

I still believe ANet removed those crafting stations because:

a) A lot of WvW players are complaining those stations, removing them would be a quick win for them. ANet doesn’t really care about WvW anyway.
b) Removing them could be a good way to promote those royal passes. Well, I haven’t bought anything yet but I do think about it, and I also know some people bought it because of this.

And why I started playing WvW? Not always, but at times when I load into WvW, I could see people are shouting on the map channel, calling help for defending the keep. I didn’t really care if I was busy doing the other stuffs, but seeing them so many times I started trying to help, and it was fun, of course. That’s how I started. Map completion was also a thing back then. We really need someway to tell PvE players come into WvW, just like we’re also forced to go PvE for some loots we could never get from playing WvW. PvE doesn’t need WvW players, but WvW does need PvE players, for now. When we don’t have population issue, we could remove them, but not now. Seriously how often did you see borderland was queued? We could also shutdown crafting stations when it starts queuing. People certainly understand. There are so many ways to fix it without removing them.

[2/2]

Even today, it’s still useful for me. Because if I load into WvW and I see a commander, I could just start following the commander, because often time there’s no commanders at all, and I couldn’t keep loading into WvW to just see if there’s one. If I constantly need to load into WvW for some convenience, I could always check if the server is in need or there’s a good commander running around.

Before I understood WvW is fun, I also felt it’s so bizarre to have those crafting stations. But when I did, I think it’s really a smart move to attract new people into WvW. I don’t have the numbers of course, but at least that’s my experience.

*

An extra step to load into WvW isn’t an issue at all. Loading WvW is way faster than Lion’s Arch. You load even faster if you parked the char in a random map then load into WvW. Loading into the other cities are faster than Lion’s Arch, however they’re still slow comparing to WvW.

kathy.8291:

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE Im still trying to meet one person who voted on this scoring system. I have yet to find that one person. WvW is going downhill and hopefully Anet will realize this and maybe fix the problem.

I think you could find some support in the thread of https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/New-Scoring-System-2

Read there to find reasoning behind that.

And I am also the other who thinks this is a step in the right direction, because now people really need to fight for the 1st place, rather than play safe and attack the 3rd place to keep in the 2nd place. If the 2nd place decided to attack the 3rd place, this also means that the 1st place could even decide who should be the 2nd place by uniting with the 3rd place.

Having 2-1-1 means there’s no points to fight for the 2nd place. The 2nd place should just unite with the 3rd place to fight the 1st place, and if the 1st place changed, the old union should break and a new union should start forming. This gives better competition.

To my experience, this doesn’t really happen though. We just want to have players to fight, who’s leading or winning doesn’t really matter. So actually I think scoring doesn’t really have that much impact, even if 2-1-1 is really worse than 3-2-1. People don’t leave WvW for this reason.

@Godfat

I share very much of your experience. I’m no sPvP player, and I first set foot in WvW because of crafting tables. Then, I followed some comms, didn’t like it so much, so I started to get involved in “PPT business” : take camps, flip sentries, take towers, escort dollies, scout towers or keeps etc. And I honestly felt useful. To me, that’s a big incentive.

I had very nice times in WvW, but I’m getting bitter because of some things. Amongst them :

• Meta builds all around. Even if I can understand that, I think it’s stale.
• Commanders that don’t care : “Sorry, I’m doing GvG, I won’t help defend that T3 tower on the way to my next fight.”
• Commanders that don’t care bis : “Sorry, I said I began leading in 3mn32s, so I won’t help you defend your T3 tower next to spawn.”
• Population imbalance associated to 2-1-1 system : “OK, so we’re against name server here this week. They have 3 times our population, so they can run 2 omniblob on each map and they’ll be first whatever we do.” Another idea that could have been fine if there weren’t that nasty thing called reality to say it’s not.
• Lame rewards : “Oh great ! I spent the last hour scouting a keep, taking back camps, escorting dollies so that it reaches T3 for one new tome of knowledge !”
• No kind of winning : “Phew… Now home is all our colour. We worked nice, and thus we get… Well… Eternal satisfaction of having home our col… Whoops, there’s now a camp to take back.”

Zok.4956:

Chaba.5410:

Mulling.8421:

It doesn’t take alot to fix WvW

The population imbalance problem apparently does take a lot. Not many RvR games have found a successful 24/7 “even numbers” formula.

Which RvR games have found a successful 24/7 “even numbers” formula?
I am wondering how they did it.

I don’t think any have, but on the other hand games have found systems that handle population balance and population decline a lot better than WvW.

Look at ESO, they have 3 factions, do they have equal numbers, of course not, but they have a campaign system which reduces the impact of that in actual matches.

There are multiple campaigns (think matches) you can choose which to play, the advantage of this is the even the faction with the fewest number of people can target one campaign and compete on that to a reasonable level, because there is a map cap like most games.

So the faction with the most players does not really have a huge advantage in the campaign everyone queues for first, they only dominate what are often “dead” campaigns where the other two factions barely play, compare that to GW2 if stacked server X ends up against middling server Y then players on server Y (and X if they are nto scrubs) are stuck with that all week.

It also copes with population decline better, in GW2 you have to move server if a server dies and you want more action, though links have reduced that somewhat, but then links introduced another problem of people wanting a different type of play in a more sparsely populated matchup no longer have that choice because they get linked, in a system like ESO if you want that you just play a lower pop campaign, and really it goes beyond that a system like ESO enables different campaigns to run on different rulesets.

Is the ESO system (or any other that handles it better) perfect, no, but when it comes to population balance and population decline, a server based system like GW2, where people can also transfer every 7 days is possibly the worst you will find in that regard.

But nothing will change, because for Anet removing the notifications that get in the way of combat is a significant project (nice game design who ever came up with that ), the idea that they will be able to do anything as significant as changing the WvW system at a fundamental level is laughable, game mode will continue to die off.

kathy.8291:

Spurnshadow.3678:

The 211 scoring system has been a huge step in the wrong direction.

ABSOLUTELY AGREE Im still trying to meet one person who voted on this scoring system. I have yet to find that one person. WvW is going downhill and hopefully Anet will realize this and maybe fix the problem.

There was no vote lol, no poll, thread, discussion etc. They just implemented it because they decided it was something they and many of us wanted to try out…. What they didn’t seem to realize is that this stupid change just encourages people to play LESS, because if there is anything WvW needed is less activity and less people playing….

ArchonWing.9480:

Yea the lag and the pathetic optimization needs to be looked at, and yes, before anyone goes “omg look at that complex code” I really don’t care and neither are the players that will alt f4 for the day.

And that’s key what archon said. Players do not care for the complex explanations. It’s a game and service customers want to play, nothing more. Everyday working people want an escape and do not want complexity, just a simple yes or no.

It doesn’t work, they move onto another game. It’s that simple.

Rewards: add better things for Badges of honor. Ascended gear, WvW exclusive skins, eve exclusive runes, wvw exclusive foods and utilities. Pretty sure WVW has no legendary backpack like other game modes.
Adding reward tracks was a great move. I love reward tracks in WVW. I would love to see kills add a better portion to these reward tracks. This would benefit higher skill level roamers and encourage fights since people mostly just want there rewards.
Adding a better reward track for WvW rank ups would be nice. Instead of a box every rank up, so a progress bar that gives increasingly better rewards every 5 ranks, with good rewards at 5 spots, and really good rewards at every 10 levels. And then add very good rewards every 25 ranks. Make it RNG based with good rewards that become better the higher your rank is (since it becomes harder to rank up). Make the rewards have 5,10,25 gold respectively. Every 25th rank also gives 2 rewards: the respective 5 or 10, and the 25 rank reward. Change the level of rewards received to be lower in EOTM to promote people playing in the main WvW game mode.

Game mode development: improved defender NPC functions, new siege (a siege tower would be really cool), add a third tier to SMC (will explain below), higher tower customization (maybe barrier constructs, being able to get on top of lords room in every tower for defense, etc.)
SMC: SMC has the highest single point valuation. It dominates the middle of the largest and most popular map. It also flips stupidly fast. Outer is ALWAYS down, and it is somewhat easier to take then any of the borderlands keeps with such vulnerable siege locations. Put the lord on the third floor and add some large doors in the end of the corridors that go into where the lord would be now. Add superior defense spots, being able to place siege on third floor and look down into the corridor, making it easier to defend, but also counterable with aoe on the openings. Make the upgrade time longer to counteract easier defense.
I personally think this would make SMC more representative of its current point value, and a more dynamic part of EBG.

oscuro.9720:

Adding a better reward track for WvW rank ups would be nice. Instead of a box every rank up, so a progress bar that gives increasingly better rewards every 5 ranks, with good rewards at 5 spots, and really good rewards at every 10 levels. And then add very good rewards every 25 ranks.

I’d suggest creating a new Reward Track Currency…instead of Instantly doling out WvW Tract Rewards...the currency can be used to purchase the items in the same progression from a WvW Vendor.

Or, make the Rewards STACKABLE in your Inventory.

Yours truly,
Diku

For a Better Long Term Solution to WvW – Try a Google Search for – wvg world vs globes

@Oscuro
Reward is not going to bring back people who left wvw and GW2. Rewards in wvw game mode should be on a par with pve/pvp but that is actually a secondary consideration for most wvw players who come to wvw for the rvr and fights. And as for adding a third tier of defence in smc….please for the love of wvw no! No more gimmicks and siege.

As people have said through this thread, fights are no longer fun due population imbalance, professional balance and the boring meta….there is much of value for Anet to read here if they are willing to work on wvw. Fluff and defence are not high in demand by the majority.

On the subject after crafting tables (I can’t quote because apparently the tree is too long)

I find that incredibly hard to believe that they would hold a significant appeal and the only things I’ve heard have been a few scattered anecdotes. Crafting in this game by and large is for high end items because for most other things, buying off the TP is far more convenient. Therefore, I find it highly difficult to believe that new players are spending a lot of time crafting high end, expensive food, and ascended armor which is overpriced and a waste for most content in this game. It’s already an inherently exclusive activity.

So as for the more established players, I really don’t see why they would pick a much more inefficient spot to do crafting. I mean, I don’t pve very much at all, and I just got myself a royal pass. Or port to Rata Sum/Fields Of Ruin. At this point, going to WvW to craft just seems utterly absurd.

Furthermore, times have changed. In the first year or two of Gw2, maybe, there were complaints about WP costs which have vanished since it’s much easier to gain coin. Another thing was crafting for levels but that has become so inefficient that it’s really not much of a thing either.

Crafting tables or not, when people see their fps drop to 10, the populations are woefully imbalanced, the combat mechanics are questionable and often devolve into build wars, and general neglect is far more enough to click the leave the mists button.

I mean in terms of rewards, which would attract a much more general audience have increased by quite a bit as opposed to before. But the issues still remain.

It doesn’t matter what carrot you use when there’s no payoff.

The further Anet move AWAY from the “dream” of turning GW2 in to an eSport, and back to making the game ACTUALLY FUN to play the better.

Honestly GW2 will never complete with DOTA or LOL as a eSport. But neither should GW2, since it is a totally different type of game.

People that wants to play DOTA or LOL will go for those. They want to level up, get gear and max skills ALL within 60 minutes. In GW2 people spent MONTHS leveling up, getting gear, etc.

And the way GW2 is set up it is not as fun as DOTA and LOL on that kind of gaming. Explaining and proving why would take a long time. But I will say one thing is that in DOTA and LOL you see your character from an overhead view. It is much easier to see the whole battle field and what is going on. In fact you can go see an area of the map that is far away from your character. GW2 is much more personal in that you see mostly what just your character sees. In DOTA and LOL you can teleport around to fight on many different fronts. In WvW you cannot teleport to your allies. In DOTA and LOL there are uses for both single target skills and AoE skills. In WvW it is all about AoE skills. So at least half of the skill available (single target) in GW2 are useless or weak in WvW, hence limiting our build choices. I am not going to list everything or prove everything. But DOTA and LOL is just more fun in that format when compared to GW2.

So why bother? GW2 need to find its own unique way. GW2 should go back to its GW1 roots. Forget eSport. It doesn’t work. It just kills the game.

Diku.4620:

CHIPS.6018:

I really don’t want to rant. Been there done that. But Anet if you are reading this, I just want you to know the most brutal and honest truth. Forget the PR. Fix your game.

PR > Fix Game

It’s damage control, denial of past mistakes, and cover-up crackdowns. It’s easier to do, but will negatively impact their revenue streams in the Long Term…they’ll of course be surprised when it hits & sinks into their reality.

Still waiting for the ability to save a build template like we did in GW1.

Websites can already do it…why can’t GW2?

And they’ll expect a full game price for the new expansion they are releasing. When players say “nah I’m good” they’ll get a big dose of reality for sure. Keep it up anet

There’s no way to nurture communities. Now its just about following the bandwagon and trying to get on the 1 and only server that has commanders and no-lifers still playing.

Please put a balancing option into EotM and change that awful map.. Servers are dead.

ArchonWing.9480:

On the subject after crafting tables (I can’t quote because apparently the tree is too long)

I find that incredibly hard to believe that they would hold a significant appeal and the only things I’ve heard have been a few scattered anecdotes. Crafting in this game by and large is for high end items because for most other things, buying off the TP is far more convenient. Therefore, I find it highly difficult to believe that new players are spending a lot of time crafting high end, expensive food, and ascended armor which is overpriced and a waste for most content in this game. It’s already an inherently exclusive activity.

So as for the more established players, I really don’t see why they would pick a much more inefficient spot to do crafting. I mean, I don’t pve very much at all, and I just got myself a royal pass. Or port to Rata Sum/Fields Of Ruin. At this point, going to WvW to craft just seems utterly absurd.

Furthermore, times have changed. In the first year or two of Gw2, maybe, there were complaints about WP costs which have vanished since it’s much easier to gain coin. Another thing was crafting for levels but that has become so inefficient that it’s really not much of a thing either.

Crafting tables or not, when people see their fps drop to 10, the populations are woefully imbalanced, the combat mechanics are questionable and often devolve into build wars, and general neglect is far more enough to click the leave the mists button.

I mean in terms of rewards, which would attract a much more general audience have increased by quite a bit as opposed to before. But the issues still remain.

It doesn’t matter what carrot you use when there’s no payoff.

player parked at the end of a jump puzzle. port to wvw to craft/bank. return to the end of the jump puzzle when leaving wvw. this is why wvw crafting was convenient – the toon ends up where it started after crafting….. don’t know why they don’t do the same with royal /airship passes – they would sell more of them…..

Let me explain why TC hasnt been winning the past 3 weeks…

1. TC wvw is dead. For servers like TC that lost all their players to servers in the top tier, we dont have enough players or even commanders to really make a difference. Right now, without a linking… TC barely has enough wvw’ers to que a single map (usually EB.. and maybe one more, Usually TC… and thats on reset night. Throughout the week its impossible to contend with the constant double team of 60+ man zergs from mag and BG on every map.

2. The rest of the week goes like this. We get tier 1.. everyone execpt the hard core players bug out for the week. Even most of our established commanders (with the exception of a few die hard commanders like Zog) even log in other than just a few minutes. They all say “With our population so low, there is no use logging in and getting blobbed.” and i cant blame them.. its terrible. Its been weeks since i saw even an EB Que during prime time. We only have a handful of players, and the occasional people from PVE popping in for dailies, so its impossible to fight against stacked servers like Mag and the mega blobs.

3. WVW is not dead.. its just hibernating.. i guess you could say. There are a LOT of people that play this game for JUST WvW … myself included. But with the current matchup and linkings, the game is just unplayable against stacked server mega blobs. Either get rid of them.. or give every server a link to make it fair. How the hell the tier 1 bandwagon server got a linking is beyond me… makes no sense at all.

Server re-linking is tonight so hopefully TC will get a link.. or at least we will drop to tier 2 until population comes back up or some guilds xfer over. The only bad thing is.. if we hit tier 2 we dominate for a week or 2 and then boom.. right back in tier 1 with the stacked servers and we get rolled over.

The game is far from dead… but the current system simply sucks because for some unknown reason the top tier servers got linked and ones with low pop like TC didn’t which creates a huge imbalance..

To prove a point.. i as many, have noticed that many times this week, even at NA prime time, Mag has more people running havoc and roaming that we have in our full squad.

We can only hope that they fix this.. but i dont know if they will since they seem to still be trying to make SPVP a sport like blizzard did in WoW and they are also working on the new expansion. Time will tell though

displayname.8315:

There’s no way to nurture communities. Now its just about following the bandwagon and trying to get on the 1 and only server that has commanders and no-lifers still playing.

Please put a balancing option into EotM and change that awful map.. Servers are dead.

I suggested many times introducing a new outmanned buff trigger or a way to only allow people on the WVW maps according to the direct population thats on.. 1 red 1 green 1 blue and open slots as people port in, but keep it to 1 to 1 to 1.

The outmanned buff is broken too.. many times this week we on TC have been only about 20 on map, with a bg zerg of 40 and mag with a full map que and OUR OUTMANNED BUFF NEVER POPPED… then a month or so ago… the outmanned buff popped on EB with a full map que on TC.

They just really need to fix the server population imbalance and stop servers like MAG and BG from linking when they are already full. Server stacking is killing the game mode

Nah, WvW is dead.

It only looks like it isn’t because of the pairings. The lower-tier servers are even more-dead than before because they all stacked to T1, and there’s little impact because they just get more pairings to uphold their low populations.

The players who wanted good matchups/even PPT as a result all quit due to the explicit removal of small-scale viability and the blatantly terrible state of the professions making the combat itself not fun.

Most commanders still running are doing it either to troll, to get bags for their PvE endeavors, or because of some arbitrary nostalgia they’re clinging onto from the “good ol’ days,” and as it’s become very apparent, it’s waning fast.

WvW died with HoT, as was expected, predicted, and warned of months before it even released.

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead. There is no simple solution to fix stacking when looking just at WvW. The real problem lies in profession design and balance.

The reason why people stack is because they want to win. Many people prior just wanted fights, winning being a bonus. That community that values the experience over the victory itself is simply gone.

Diku.4620:

There’s a brake to this consistent downhill slide of WvW population levels & company revenue profits caused by World Linking, but it’s going to take somebody with a steady Long Term vision & a deep love for the game mode.

As population levels slide…so will generated revenue.

The changes needed to make WvW into a healthy competitive game mode that leverages population in-balances to create opportunities for balance instead of crippling fair play aren’t that complex.

Diku, can you start your own mmo already please? We’re tired of waiting on anet

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

Very well said.

I used to spend a lot of time in WvW because the gameplay in coordinated guild groups was fun and engaging. Now it mostly isn’t. There are plenty of reasons for that, but the biggest turning point for me was the stab change. I understand why it was considered necessary and it worked fairly well in other game modes, but it wrecked the ‘fun and engaging’ part of WvW large group play.

GreyWraith.8394:

msalakka.4653:

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

Very well said.

I used to spend a lot of time in WvW because the gameplay in coordinated guild groups was fun and engaging. Now it mostly isn’t. There are plenty of reasons for that, but the biggest turning point for me was the stab change. I understand why it was considered necessary and it worked fairly well in other game modes, but it wrecked the ‘fun and engaging’ part of WvW large group play.

The stab changes, the new trait system an the rushed/unbalanced elite specs are the 3 worse things that have happened to this game. These things together just destroyed WvW gameplay.

WvW server pairings is very laughable… what a poor work, i guess Anet is really enforcing Ktrains.

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Zero.3871:

i would like to see that anet decrease capacity of maps, so each server can bring a maximum of 40 players to the maps. that would stop this newbie blobbers and stop skillaggs in big fights. the players would have to transfer back to smaller server because of qeues, if they want play wvw.

That’s pretty doubtful. All it would change is that instead of running 75 on a pin, people would run in a blob of 40. There’s no need, at all, to spread out in wvw (auto upgrades, auto scouting, PPK encourages blobbing as a strategy, need big groups to carry enough supply to siege objectives – the list goes on and on).

Also the philosophy of ‘if you design is miserable enough players will pay money move to have fun again’ seems like a negative way to go about your goals.

I think one thing that killed the influx of new people into wvw was pve megaservers. You all remember when going to LA and shouting that garri was under attack to recruit people was a thing? Megaservers are here to stay unfortunately, but there could be a way around that. Ya know how occasionally when they have pve events, you’ll get random messages across the screen in wvw announcing some pve thing going on? Why dont we have that for wvw? Like for example, garrison for green borderland is being attacked. It would display a message across the screen in all pve maps for all the people only on that server. You would get wvw related messages in pve according to what is going on with your server in wvw at the time. And pvers have no right to complain about this. They absolutely should do it because we get all those stupid pve event messages in wvw. They should get wvw messages too.

Nikkinella.8254:

I think one thing that killed the influx of new people into wvw was pve megaservers. You all remember when going to LA and shouting that garri was under attack to recruit people was a thing? Megaservers are here to stay unfortunately, but there could be a way around that. Ya know how occasionally when they have pve events, you’ll get random messages across the screen in wvw announcing some pve thing going on? Why dont we have that for wvw? Like for example, garrison for green borderland is being attacked. It would display a message across the screen in all pve maps for all the people only on that server. You would get wvw related messages in pve according to what is going on with your server in wvw at the time. And pvers have no right to complain about this. They absolutely should do it because we get all those stupid pve event messages in wvw. They should get wvw messages too.

A way around that is if TEAM CHAT goes server wide in PvE maps.

Well at this point. I believe what needs to be done is to refocus WvW to guilds.
1) Drop the worlds system. They have little to no purpose since Megaservers.
2) Create fluid guild alliances. You can have 5 guilds per account. You should be able to join a single alliance per account this way. It would make it way more competitive with lower population. It can create fluid tiers too with total guild populations the limiting factor. GvG actually becomes a real thing within the game mode that was the closest to it.
3) I understand the devs wanted to make WvW inclusive for everyone. But we have EotM for that (sadly.) If a new player actually likes EotM they can join a WvW allied guild.

4) Create a map for WvW with gliding with objectives on top so people can’t glide into them.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Data-driven AI and a big devotion to log file processing to create said data would solve it entirely and prevent any community intervention that lasted longer than maybe a few days or a single matchup. But that’s very laborious and extremely difficult to implement at that. It’d require a lot of resources which simply put aren’t going to be devoted to the mode.

The community will always be hellbent on stacking so long as the encounters keep getting less fun and the game more stagnant. The first is on the profession design team so we know it’s never going to be resolved. The second is just part of the vicious cycle of not having the matchups paired as the aforementioned.

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Data-driven AI and a big devotion to log file processing to create said data would solve it entirely and prevent any community intervention that lasted longer than maybe a few days or a single matchup. But that’s very laborious and extremely difficult to implement at that. It’d require a lot of resources which simply put aren’t going to be devoted to the mode.

What are you talking about? I don’t care how much data you collect and what you do with it, it won’t change anything. The playerbase isn’t trying to create balanced matches. They’re actively trying to create lopsided matches. If your system creates a balanced match, people will transfer to one server until it’s overloaded and wins in a lopsided victory. The only way to prevent that is to completely stop server transfers.

Diku.4620:

Server Guesting should be re-purposed & tailored for WvW to use for creating player driven Match-Ups.

Let players stack servers as much as they want, but allow them to go to any server where the action is…with weekly limits on which server & how many servers that they are allowed to fight on.

Players don’t go where the “action” is, they go to where the easy wins are. You can’t let the players choose where they want to play, they will choose the easy way most of the time.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Server stacking is a hard problem to solve on the technical level, despite being doable. ANet’s unwilling to devote the resources needed to do so, so we get ineffective algorithms, instead.

Server stacking is not possible to solve when the community is so intent on destroying any possible solutions that Anet implements. The only way to fix stacking would be to completely stop server transfers of any kind. That would allow Anet to balance the populations appropriately. Obviously they’ll never do that because not only would that make a ton of people scream and cry about it, it would also remove their primary wvw revenue stream.

Data-driven AI and a big devotion to log file processing to create said data would solve it entirely and prevent any community intervention that lasted longer than maybe a few days or a single matchup. But that’s very laborious and extremely difficult to implement at that. It’d require a lot of resources which simply put aren’t going to be devoted to the mode.

What are you talking about? I don’t care how much data you collect and what you do with it, it won’t change anything. The playerbase isn’t trying to create balanced matches. They’re actively trying to create lopsided matches. If your system creates a balanced match, people will transfer to one server until it’s overloaded and wins in a lopsided victory. The only way to prevent that is to completely stop server transfers.

Or have matchmaking change who goes where so quickly that there’s no time to respond.

Put it this way, if pairings changed, and changed massively every week, even to a point to make winning servers be at a disadvantage, then you’d see transfer numbers plummet because the entire incentive to transfer/garnish free wins would be pretty much nullified because of a lack of consistency.

I.E., BG has a long-standing reign on WvW; use data collected at certain times of day and player behaviors to pair up servers to match coverage and mirror or exceed those numbers, and dynamically change the queues based on this data as well to enforce a fairer PPT match based on short-and-long-term player data. If BG loses, do analysis on transfer maps etc., and re-balance appropriately, potentially doing nothing. Re-kitten PPT spread at the end of each week also compared with a history of past matchups, and go from there.

Even things like common player behavioral patterns based on movement vectors, skirmish sizes, regions, guild runs by grouped player mapping, etc. are all able to be parsed and are currently collected and stored by ANet. I don’t think you’re fully appreciating just how much dynamism, analysis, and data collection would be needed to properly balance matchups, though, which is why I think it infeasible; it would require truly tremendous resources (which ANet ultimately does have, but it would be a huge investment) in comparison to the rest of the game to properly complete.

Otherwise, yea, you’re not really solving the problem of match manipulation without removing transfers, but that’s kind of a non-option for community and PR and general profitability reasons.

Diku.4620:

You’re right, but which would you prefer?

ANet picking your Match-Ups using World Linking every other month
OR
You picking which servers that you want to fight on using Server Guesting every week

Servers can be from any of the 27 EU or 24 NA.

Good idea diku, and it might be cheap enough for anet to actually implement. Any suggestions made have to be dirt cheap and basically take 0 resources for them to actually do it.

I would go further and say pick your guesting each day, or even each skirmish, that’s a logical changing point. Once a week long match is unbalanced its time to quit until next reset…sadly.

displayname.8315:

Once a week long match is unbalanced its time to quit until next reset…sadly.

Maybe it’s time to give up the week-long match model… Skirmishes were a good way to give focus to a certain time frame, but the overall score still tied to a match that is too long.

Shorter matchups would make imbalance a bit more “bearable” since we wouldn’t have to wait 7 days when we roll a entirely loopsided one.

I never intended to be a WvW player. I had tried WvW maybe once or twice over the years, but was quickly stomped to death, I thought it was too confusing and not much fun for a casual PvE player like me…

But then I (finally) bought a precursor weapon, and had to earn Gift of Exploration and Gift of Battle to craft my Legendary. So I resigned myself to spending a few days in WvW hell. But as fate would have it, I happened to (re) join WvW during Golem Rush Week (which was quite entertaining). After a few nights in WvW, and committing time to adjusting my builds, I had earned the Gifts, but more importantly, I had climbed-up the “learning curve” just enough to want to play WvW for fun!

If Anet is keen to keep WvW going, then I think they should do more to broadly encourage PvE players to try WvW (not just those seeking Gifts for Legendary weapons). Currently, there is so much open world content in PvE, that I suspect many newer PvE players are unaware of the competitive play experience.